


The Devil's After Both of Us

by Eatgreass



Series: The slow descent [3]
Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen, I just think she should be allowed to be angry, I love my girl, I won't shut up about that and I love her so you can't stop me, because if I can't find any fic that makes her angry like I read the text ill make it, gratuitous metaphors and a sonnet halfway through because, ophelia died with the angry she never got, yeah...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: Ophelia is angry, and nobody can take that away.
Series: The slow descent [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899646
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Devil's After Both of Us

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah... it's a song title, from curses by the crane wives

Nobody ever said an ending had to be pretty to be fulfilling. 

Nobody ever said it had to be happy, either.

Choking on filthy pond water was not happy, it was not pretty, it wasn’t even dignified. It was a coward’s end, and she’d be buried in an unmarked grave for her mistakes.

“Mad with love.”

Yeah, right. She wasn’t mad with  _ love,  _ she wasn’t mad that she had been fucking broken up with, she was angry that her father was dead by the one person who saw through the facade of Elsinore.

Why couldn’t she be upset for a real reason? Her father was dead and she had trusted a madman to set the world right for her, and she had trusted a twisted woman for her comfort, so yes. She was upset, histrionic, mad, insane,  _ angry _ . Anything you could name she became, and she embraced the rush of adrenaline that pain could give her. When you tie a rope around your arm and pull it taut, it’s easy to forget the guilt as your hand turns purple. 

To sleep?

Perchance to dream?

Ay, there’s the rub. 

Life was nightmares incarnate, and dreaming afforded her no pleasure save a dagger in her hand and blood splattered across her dress as she did what she wished the prince had. 

Damned in dreams, damned in Denmark, damned in death. 

Angry.  _ Angry,  _ not insane. A girl that was used and used and used for the benefit of elevating her father. A girl that was used as a token for the madness of another, a girl used like a tool for her entire life. She wasn’t even used like the sharpened dagger she knew she could be. People used her like a rope, hanging themselves from her as martyrs, while neglecting to see her as her own person. People used her as a rope for show, not wielding her as a blade or as something to be feared. She was twine in the corner of their minds, and in the back of their minds she could sit until she tied their hands and forced them to  _ see.  _

A thrice damned almost princess, and what did that mean for her? Fear. Pain. Tears as pale as the sapphires around her neck as she jumped. She was allowed to be angry, she deserved the anger. 

Oh god, let her have that anger, at least. 

Let a girl use a dagger instead of forcing her to jump in a lake and die poetically. 

_ One girl living inside darkness shadow _

_ With a father dead and brother fuming _

_ Nothing left and oh, watch the water flow _

_ Temptation calling, madness consuming. _

_ All faith is gone and a friend lost to sea _

_ Why then, can she not join the muck like him? _

_ Anger took her, flowers do not make free _

_ The best end is finality, last swim.  _

_ Death is the catharsis for this lady _

_ Falling into a pond is her release. _

_ Rocks in her dress pockets, the grove shady _

_ And within her pain, a sad kind of peace. _

_ So the story of Ophelia ended _

_ With choking on her tears and that damned rue _

_ And to hell the no-more maid descended _

_ Gertrude found the corpse in the morning dew. _

_ Her pain was ne’er listened to, her pride gone. _

_ For what to expect when walking at dawn? _

A woman in hell, a woman angry, a woman unbecoming to the grand danish court and the flowers in her hair were a testament to mistakes others made. 

Pity is the tool of a fool, and she was not one of those despite her vices. 

Falling was an I-told-you-so, and if her pockets were full of rocks, she was going to drag the world to the bottom with her. 

An unheard scream, because if she was already damned, why not become the devil? 

An angel in life, and a rotting corpse of a devil in death because madness is both anger and insanity, and she had a hand on each of the two, forcing them to bend to her own will.

**Author's Note:**

> I've started writing an Ophelia comes back as a ghost au so you know, I can write something happy at times, if there's nowhere to go but up! I haven't posted it yet but it's on its way. Anyway, writing a sonnet is a massive bitch. Fun, but it took an hour.


End file.
